Every Inch But One
by ct522
Summary: Set during Dark Days. A rebel against the Capitol has been captured and imprisoned. As he awaits his fate, he finds hope in the fissures of his cell. Panem AU, Pre-Hunger Games. WARNING: Implied Character Deaths. Based on tumblr writing meme, prompt 37 - Everlark AU meet in prison (prompt bent to suit my purposes).


**WARNING: Implied Character Deaths**

**XXXX**

_"I know I can't convince you that this isn't one of their tricks. But I don't care. Because if I'm going to die, I want to die being me._

_"My name is Petyr Mellark. By the time you read this, I'll probably be dead, and I want someone to know about my life."_

That's how the first letter begins. He's right, of course. At first, I'm sure that it is a ploy by my captors to wear me down psychologically. They were already starving me, though I know they wouldn't get very far with that tactic. Those of us who lived in the Districts are too used to going hungry. But they blast music into my cell at all hours of the day and night, beat me with or without interrogating me, and make every effort to ensure that I am as miserable as possible.

I'm a rebel against the Capitol, after all. And now, I'm just waiting to die, too.

**XXXXX**

I find the letters one day when I'm crawling around my cell in an agony of sleeplessness. I often set my face against the cool floor, attempting to quench the flames of fear and dread that spread throughout my bruised body. My head has been shaved, but the stubble is growing back and therefore in need of a touch-up. Strange, the inanities we dwell upon to avoid thinking about the things that are so enormous, we refuse to spare a moment's distraction to ask ourselves the questions that matter - Will I survive this? Is this fight worth my life?

I pull up the loose tile with bloodied nails to discover the collection of oddly shaped pages folded neatly together. The handwriting belies the squalor of the paper - a neat, manly press of clear, printed letters, as if the writer feared any flair on his behalf would obscure the meaning of the message. I desperately need another feeling to replace the constant fear in my bones so I embrace the curiosity that settles over me as I read the notes.

_"I was born in District 12, the son of a baker. The smell of flour and baked bread is an older memory to me than even my own name. I love the aroma of yeast and dough rising. It's one of the things I miss the most about home._

_My father's family have been bakers for generations. We baked recipes that had come down to us from the time of open pits and outdoor stone ovens. It was in our blood, the dough practically an extension of our bodies. _

_My mother came from a family of commercial traders. Trading was one of the few professions allowed access beyond the borders of the District. My mother had been exposed to things most people never even dream of and the almost magical things she saw appeared in her secret sketchbook, drawings I discovered and studied as a model for my own artwork. She always said that when she married my father, her world shrank to the size of a baker's oven. It was something she resented all her life._

_I have two older brothers, Brandt and Rolland. Father taught all three of us to wrestle because he said the sport was an old, noble one that existed long before the world turned upside down. I learned later on that he actually used it as a pretense for teaching us to fight. He knew we would need it. He did this sorrowfully, especially in my case, because my first instinct was never to fight. But artists don't last long in a world at war."_

The writing ends on that page. I turn it over, looking for more, but there is nothing to indicate that he'd written anything further except for the tear at the bottom of the sheet. I hold the paper gently, as if I am holding Petyr's soul in my hand - fragile and in need of protection. I have the mad thought that as long as I care for it, no harm can come to him. This, of course, is foolishness. Who knows how long he'd been here and gone? He might no longer even be alive. And yet that paper becomes a friend to me and makes the inhuman brightness of the cold, phosphorescent lights somewhat warmer than before.

**XXXXX **

I have to be careful when reading my letters, for fear that the guards will come at any time and discover me immersed in those paragraphs that have become the gift of life for me. I do not open each letter right away, savoring them as one savors a treat that, once consumed, will not be replaced again. I read the second one fairly quickly after one of my beatings. It is as if a homing signal had been sent out to my battered soul, a small piece of healing magic in a place where magic had long been destroyed. As I take in each word, I'm no longer alone in this pit of misery, and I take care to read each sentence carefully, hoping to hold on to his words even as my eyes fly over the page.

_"I was never interested in the rebellion. Not right away. Things were bad; it's true. But I didn't think the rebels had the strength to defeat the Capitol. Even though I had never actually seen a war, I was afraid most of all for the waste of human life. We had been close to extermination during the Great Catastrophe that decimated the population, sending much of the continent where Panem was later established under water. We learned about the Great Catastrophe in school and also learned how the system of Districts supporting the Capitol was the buffer that kept the citizens of Panem from outright barbarism and death. _

_However, as I grew older, I failed to see how starving the Districts was a form of protection. I was not the only one who thought this way, but my fear of widespread death kept me from acting on my impulses. I didn't want to be a part of the wholesale murder of anyone so I stayed away from rebel activities. However, sentiment was spreading quickly in the District that we would soon need to show our support for other Districts in the armed resistance. When Brandt and Rolland openly joined the rebel army, it seemed my fate had been sealed. I would have no choice but to fight alongside my brothers because my loyalty was to my family first, before any national allegiance."_

As I read this, I think of my brothers and sisters. There were eight of us Odair siblings, and I'd already lost two to the fighting. I remember when the news was given to my parents and do not need to imagine the acute horror of losing not one but two beloved sons. They wore their naked pain in their eyes and in the way they fell upon each other and us in grief. We were all in a rebel camp by then and though my family had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the rebellion, though they knew the cost could be very high, it hurt nonetheless. I think of Anna and our young son, Donat and fold the letter carefully against my chest as if to ward off what I knew must be coming for Petyr.

**XXXXX**

When I read the opening lines of the third letter, I brace myself for what is to come.

_"There's a girl. I swear, there's nobody like her in the world. The first time I met Katlyn Everdeen, it was when I heard her singing on the way home from school, and I knew, at that very moment, that I was a goner. I noticed lots of girls in my life, but this girl is one-of-a-kind._

_She is strong and beautiful. I know that there is more poetry about love in the world than any person would have time to read in his life. But this girl is a walking poem and not just because she's the most striking girl I'd ever seen. The first time I kissed her, I stopped existing. I understood what it was like to die, and I wanted to die over and over again, in her arms."_

I put the letter down and wipe the tears from my eyes. There's a girl I love also - a girl I wanted to leave for her own good, but she chose to follow me and my family into the mountains, away from the seaside villages of District 4. She wanted to fight because she said she wanted a world where we could raise our son in freedom and not like a downtrodden beast of burden. Now I have no idea where my wife is. I don't know where my son is. Maybe they're dead. Maybe it's better if we were all dead.

Love is a flower that grows, only to die in the trenches of war.

_"I wasn't supposed to be with her - she was from the Seam. Those were the people everyone avoided - dark-haired, grey-eyed, dirty and poor, even by our district's standards. My mother said that all the soot of the coal mines got into their mother's bellies - that's why those people were so dark. She hated them more than anything else._

_But no matter what my mother said, this girl was it for me. She is dark, but it's the kind of darkness you wanted to get lost in. I don't know how I managed to get her attention, but I did and the first time we snuck away to her secret lake to be together, it was like I'd been holding my breath all of my life and in that moment with her, I finally exhaled. I don't care what anyone says, you don't go falling in love like that with just anyone. War or no war, I would have given everything up for her."_

I crumple the paper in my hand, gripping it to my chest. _Didn't you lose everything anyway, Petyr? If you ended up here, doesn't that mean you lost her, too?_ I give myself over to my desperation. _Why am I doing this to myself?_ He didn't escape and neither will I.

I'll never see Anna. I'll never see my boy. I'll never see a day of freedom again.

**XXXXX**

I'm so angry now; angry at the parallels, angry at the failures, angry that this boy who'd found a girl in which to lose himself had ended up in this hell-hole of a prison, with the acrid odor of antiseptic barely covering the smell of sweat and shit and hopelessness. That my son, if he does live to grow up, won't know his fuck-up of a father, who'd been known to haul in a bloody, full-grown great white shark on a line the size of a man's wrist with his bare hands but couldn't outrun two miserable Peacekeepers in his own hills.

I hold off on reading any more of his notes for a few days. I hit rock bottom. They drag me out like a broken rag doll for the upteenth beating, asking about hideouts and traitors. In the last interrogation, they warn me that a "tribunal" was in the process of deciding my fate, and I finally tell them to put a bullet through me and get it over with. I'm wrecked with misery for myself, for the Districts, for this boy with the grey-eyed lover, for the whole mad world.

But time has the power to dull even the sharpest edge. The noise and incarcerations and beatings are the same, delivered with a half-hearted compliance by captors who perhaps have better things to do. In this uninterrupted monotony, I realize I miss his quiet voice in my mind as I read along with him. Besides my memories of Anna and Donat, he is the last bit of human beauty I have left.

I triumphantly pull out the next note and scamper to a corner of the cell to read it, as if taking a long draught after days without water. My friend and compatriot calls to me across time, and I respond by greedily unfolding the page.

_"Rebel leaders were organizing a major push into District 11 to unite rebel forces and capture the agricultural lands. Supplies for the rebels were dwindling, and the conquest of this vast district was critical for our survival."_

This is my first indication as to when Petyr occupied this cell. The rebel offensive in District 11 had long since failed by the time of my incarceration. If he was, indeed, part of the unit that entered District 11, then he had been in this cell no more than six months ago. The sudden placement of Petyr in the context of a time period close to my own suddenly makes him corporeal, more real to me. He is no longer a fairy tale or a ghost reading a chapter from an old, dusty, history book. Petyr is now flesh and blood and with the right confluence of circumstances, I imagine that I could have even met him at some point, though I was far away from District 11's campaign. I recall the rebels I fought alongside with, wondering if, had I seen him, would I have understood his import at the time? I return to his letter with newfound urgency and a desire against hope that his story will be written differently.

_"Before we escaped District 12, Katlyn came to see me. She told me she'd volunteered to join the rebels. I was so furious with her, and we argued bitterly. But in the end, there was no turning her away. She came from a family of hunters, and she had more practice with a bow and arrow than almost anyone in the company, making her invaluable on the front lines of the assault. I had to accept that I would be fighting alongside her, that I not only could I die, but worse, I could lose her also in this campaign. If death did not haunt us, I might have stopped talking to her - that's how enraged I was at her idealism. As it was, time was too precious to waste, and I now had a new mission - to make sure she lived at all costs."_

I hear the opening of the cell door behind me. Glancing at the paper, it's obvious he ends this part of the account here. I panic at the thought that I won't know how things end with him, but I have no time to think about it because the guards are waiting for me. Strange that they haven't picked me up by my collar and dragged me out, a break in routine which implies that wherever they are taking me will be different from usual. I don't know what to do with the letter so I fold it swiftly and put it in my mouth. It tastes no better than the dry bread and gruel they bring twice a day to keep me just this side of death. But there is a sense of satisfaction in the fact that his story is now a part of my body the way it has become a part of my soul.

**XXXXX**

When I return to my cell, I launch myself like a maniac in search of another note, another piece of his story, the one that will tell me how it all ends. The tribunal has found me guilty of treason, and I am to be hanged in the morning. Despite this news, the main thought I have in my mind is that I cannot die without knowing what happened to Petyr and his lover.

I sob with joy when I find the one last unopened note. I brace myself for his fate as I must soon for my own.

_"The campaign was a bloody one that lasted for days. I lost Brandt almost immediately to mortar fire that tore up the fighting line just a few feet from us. I couldn't find Rolland anywhere. I didn't have time to grieve the loss of my oldest brother because we were immediately under attack by fighter crafts appearing overhead. District 13 sent in aerial support, but it was not sufficient against the full might of the Capitol Air Command. I tried to stay as close to Katlyn as possible, but my heart dropped in my chest when I watched District 13 fighters circle back around in the direction of their home. I didn't need Commander Hawthorne to tell me that we were on our own. _

_I pulled Katlyn aside and broke rank, heading for the tall forests at the end of the corn maze where Peacekeepers were engaging our ground forces. I gave Katlyn my tags and extra weapons, and told her that rebels weren't going to win this, that she had to get home. She fell apart before my eyes - here was a girl who'd seen people from her very neighborhood mowed down not two feet from her position and hadn't bat an eye but now, she was in a fit of hysterics over my suggestion. _

_But there was no denying the truth of what I said as the order to retreat to the surrounding forests was given. She could wail and rage all she wanted - she had a wicked temper and a hard head when it came to it - but she couldn't ignore the reality of the men racing by us. I pushed her towards the retreating line._

_'Where are you going?' she accused me._

_'I'm going with Commander Hawthorne to give cover to our ground forces as they pull back. And I have to find Rolland. He was ahead of us in the line. I can't...I can't leave two brothers here.'_

_'Let me go with you! I'm the best shot in the unit!' she screamed, clutching my arm._

_Katlyn wanted at all costs to follow me, but I forced her to go, telling her that I wouldn't be able to do this if I had to think of her safety also. I needed to make sure our tags got back to my parents and right now, she was my insurance. If she loved me, she would do this for me. There was no way to ensure that any of us would make it, but she owed it to me to try, for she'd bewitched me and made me love her and because I could not bear to live without her, she was obligated to preserve her own life and do what I asked of her._

_She clung to me and at that moment, I knew that this was the last time I'd ever see her. I didn't tell her this - it was the only time I'd ever lied to her, even by omission. I kissed her, like I've never kissed her in my life, and I think she understood by the way I couldn't quite let her go that I was saying goodbye. Of course, she resisted. But I caught sight of Lieutenant Abernathy leading out the wounded and told him to take her, that she had battlefield fever, and she was going to get herself killed if she wasn't removed from the fighting. _

_I'll never forget the look of betrayal in her eyes as he literally carried her, kicking and screaming towards the woods. But I don't regret it, not for a moment, because no matter how many lives I live, I will always give myself up for her. I will love that girl through every iteration of my existence, I would sacrifice myself for her and I would die for her. When I turned my remaining live rounds on the wall of Peacekeepers descending on us, I felt as bright and alive as the dandelions in the great meadow of my District. I had found a purpose greater than war, greater than revolution and in that moment, I grasped the concept of true freedom. I no longer feared death. One way or another, my life would go on in hers."_

There's more, but I can't see past my own agony. I think of my parents, my brothers and sisters, of Anna and Donat. My heart breaks open and a certainty comes from there, that they are alive, that my son will pass his father's trident down to all the brave Odair's that will come after. Not the war, or the revolution, but my love for Anna and our son will ensure my immortality. I kiss the page where Petyr had written his last words, letting the salt mingle with the ink he'd somehow managed to procure to write his biography. I will be gone in the morning but tonight, I remain in the solidarity with a man who, despite the gulf of time that separates us, somehow knows and understands me. With that mutual understanding, I read the last paragraphs.

_"They'll take everything from me. I'm here in this cell knowing the days are counted. They will take every last inch except for one - the one that I gave to Katlyn the first time I kissed her, the first time we made love, the last time we said goodbye. It's all I've got, after the torture, the interrogations, and the death sentence. But it's worth more to me than a hundred years of life. Because I'll die as myself and that's all we have as human beings, and I managed to salvage that. _

_I don't know who you are, I don't know if it is a prisoner or a guard who is reading my letter. But I want to tell you this - I hope you escape this place. I hope the world becomes more worthy of the best of you. But understand when I tell you that even though I don't know you, I love you, my friend. I would lay down my life to preserve that part of you if it were demanded, because it is the best part of all of us, the part they can't take away. _

_I've had the privilege of loving a woman with all my heart, of loving my family to the bitter end. And I reserve for myself the privilege of loving you, too._

_Petyr"_

**XXXXX**


End file.
